October 01, 2018 at 09:50PM Well-versed in the magical-seeming effects of apple cider vinegar, turmeric, and maca, I thought I had my superfood bases covered—and then moringa hit the scene (well, my scene—the buzzy ingredient is hardly new). It has even more anti-inflammatory powers than turmeric, AKA the stalwart wellness-world obsession that’s been credited with everything from improving immune function to giving you glowing skin and even whitening your teeth. But now moringa has everyone talking, thanks to its nutrient-dense punch, with twice the protein as turmeric, and three times the amount of iron as spinach—and it’s popping up in grocery aisles and on beauty shelves alike. You can technically get your fix with a straight-up (and foolproof) powder mixture of the super green, but brands have caught on to the fact that moringa is full of all of the protein, iron, and calcium you could want in a single serving and thus have widened their offerings. Now the stuff is available in supplements, snacks, skin care, and even a kombucha (which is probably a helpful vessel to mask moringa’s polarizing taste, à la ACV). Scroll below to see 5 options for adding some moringa into your routine. Shop the moringa products Buy Now SuperLeaf Moringa Skin Food $32 Buy Now Yogi Tea Organic Green Tea with Blackberry Moringa $3 Buy Now Amazing Grass Beauty Elixir $28 Buy Now Vegan Rob’s Moringa Puffs $2 Buy Now Traditional Medicinals Moringa with Spearmint & Sage tea $8.77 Originally posted November 2, 2017. Updated October 2, 2018. If you want to keep turmeric in your wellness rotation, here are some
Category: Vegetarians
Ummm, a lot of maple syrup isn’t vegan—here’s why
October 02, 2018 at 03:00AM Since honey is a no-go and standard white table sugar (and brown sugar, too!) uses bone char—AKA ground up animal bones—to get that bright white color, it’s not uncommon for vegans to sweeten up cookies and stir-fries alike with the fall season staple of maple syrup. The only problem? The healthier alternative might not be the animal-byproduct-free safe bet you assumed. While the sap itself is totally dependable for vegans—it’s simply tapped from maple trees, after all—the problem originates in how the final product is made. After the sap is collected, it’s taken to the sugarhouse to be boiled down—a process that evaporates the water and caramelizes the sugar, leaving the mixture nice and thick. To reduce the foam on the syrup, conventional producers tend to add in a sneaky ingredient that’s far from vegan-friendly to get the job done. “Sometimes animal fat is used in the production of maple syrup to defoam the product after it’s been boiled,” says plant-based nutrition coach Courtney Pool. What’s worse is the ingredient isn’t even listed on product labels, so people could go their entire pancake-loving lives without knowing they’re actually eating lard. “Sometimes animal fat is used in the production of maple syrup to defoam the product after it’s been boiled.” —Courtney Pool, plant-based nutrition coach There is good news, though: You don’t need animal fat to make maple syrup. The sweet stuff can be defoamed using vegetable-based products instead. So how do you know if you’re choosing the right container? Basically, just pay
Pinterest searches for ‘Aquaponic’ gardening are up 1000%, but what on earth is it?
October 01, 2018 at 12:46PM When prompted, most proud plant ladies will call aloe vera, rattlesnake plants, and marimosa moss balls their pets. And yet, to take that sentiment one step further, a new indoor foliage trend combines actual pets (fish) with the chlorophyll-munching variety. That’s probably why searches for the trend “aquaponic gardening” are up a whopping 980 percent on Pinterest. The name for this plant-obsessive practice is a mashup of “aquaculture,” meaning raising fish and “hydroponics,” meaning growing plants sans-soil, according to The Aquaponic Source. In practice, the two lifeforms work symbiotically: The fish provide an organic source of food for the fish (via their, er, poo), while the plants filter the chum’s H2O. The result? You get fresh, pesticide-free produce with a fish-friend to boot. While farms across America use the aquaponic technique to run large-scale, fish raising and veggie-cultivating operations, you can start a family-sized garden wherever you have a well-lit corner to house a mini-ecosystem in your home or backyard. Or, if your apartment is a den of darkness, you’ll just need to purchase a grow light instead. Once your tank has accumulated a diverse population, you might also be able to introduce fruiting plants like tomatoes or peppers. Meaning, you could home-grow your whole salad order, NBD. To skip the trouble of visiting PetSmart and Home Depot to collect a tank, fish, seeds, and the like, you can nab a starter kit on Amazon to take some of the legwork out of the setup. Then, all that’s left is
We went to Antoni Porowski’s new restaurant, and the menu caters to basically every possible diet plan
October 01, 2018 at 11:11AM Hear ye, hear ye, Queer Eye and healthy-eating fanatics: Your favorite, totally Fab food expert’s long-awaited restaurant is open for business starting today. And despite Antoni Porowski’s pretty strong obsession with all things avocado on the Emmy-winning Netflix show (I mean, no judgment at all—we’re biologically predisposed to love the green smash on toast, after all), the fibrous fruit is hardly the star of the menu at The Village Den, the fast-casual joint in Manhattan’s West Village. Rather, when we went to check out the airy, plant-laden eatery for lunch on opening day, it was clear that the salad-slinging spot’s central mission is to cater to a heavy handful of popular nutrition plans. Porowski—who previously told Well+Good that his eating habits include a combo of keto-style, Paleo, and veganism—may well have created the menu with himself in mind, because each offering is adorned with icons noting whether it’s Whole30, Paleo, ketogenic, plant-based, vegetarian, dairy, gluten-free, or detox (which seems to superfluously indicate the inclusion of a “detox powder” supplement). For example, a $7 oven-baked frittata impressively boasts six icons—holy health! Each menu offering is adorned with icons noting whether it’s Whole30, Paleo, keto, plant-based, vegetarian, dairy, gluten-free, or detox. The robust smoothie menu features a variety of the fruit and veggie usual suspects in some inspired concoctions like the Watermelon Spice, which includes, duh, watermelon, coconut water, strawberries, ginger, lemon zest, and mint. More specialized ingredients, like MCT oil, spirulina, and matcha, make an appearance in some
Wait, are acai bowls *really* healthy?
October 01, 2018 at 09:33AM Acai bowls have long been a fixture on our Insta feeds, and for good reason. The amethyst purple and coconut-flake-topped treat is total eye candy, and you can now get one in nearly every neighborhood in LA and NYC. (And at Costco everywhere else.) But good looks and popularity aside, a wellness-crazed babe has to wonder: How do these almond-butter-drizzled, deep-hued wonders actually stack up nutritionally? The short answer is it’s complicated.“There is no one standard way to make an acai bowl, so they vary considerably,” says sports dietitian Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, CSSD. The one thing many of them do have in common is the acai itself, a fruit sourced from South American rainforests that, in and of itself, is quite healthy. It’s packed with inflammation-fighting antioxidants and is super low in sugar when compared to other fruits, clocking in at just 2 to 3 grams of sugar per serving. But since plain acai tastes bitter, that’s not usually all you’re getting. “It’s not uncommon for bowls made with the whole fruit to be sweetened with artificial sugar and syrups, drizzled with honey on top, or blended with sweetened almond or soy milk,” says Sass. “And in addition to acai, most bowls contain other fruits, like banana and berries, and often nuts or nut butter, shredded coconut, or even chocolate.” The other scenario is that many chains and local juice bars use “pomegranate powder” or “acai berry powder” instead of the whole fruit, both of which are pre-packed with
Rachel Brathen answers every vegan’s least-favorite question: “How do you get enough protein?”
October 01, 2018 at 07:21AM Anyone who’s ever taken a vegan diet for a test drive knows there’s no shortage of invasive speculation that comes with the all-veg lifestyle. But one FAQ tends to get tossed out way more than salad during dinner conversation: How do you get enough protein from vegan sources? When I ask Rachel Brathen, the herbivorous yogi known as Yoga Girl, about her experience with what I feel to be the seriously overplayed query, she immediately backs me up: It is a thing. “I think it’s so funny. It’s like the number-one question that I’m asked by non-vegans and non-vegetarians, but I think it’s a little bit outdated,” she says with a laugh. “You don’t need to eat beef, eggs, and all these other animal products to get your protein.” “I get most of my protein from what you would assume are the basic non-animal forces, so we eat a lot of tofu, beans, and lentils, and quinoa, things like that. And of course a lot of nuts.” —Rachel Brathen, Yoga Girl According to the Dietary Reference Intakes set out by the US Department of Health and Human Services, she’s totally right. Those guidelines spell out that individuals need to eat about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Meaning, for every 25 pounds you weigh, you should be eating about 9 grams of protein, unless you’re an endurance athletes, meaning you may require between 1.2 to 1.4 grams per kg, or about 14 grams per 25 pounds. So
Making zero plans this summer taught me some important lessons about JOMO
October 01, 2018 at 07:12AM At a time when most people were figuring out how to make the most of their 99 days of summer, I set a different intention. After feeling a bad case of burnout coming on, I decided to sit the summer out. Because, IMHO, the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day feels more-and-more like an extended New Year’s Eve, where plans must be made and fun must be had. I was over it. Mid-way through my experiment, a term was coined—JOMO or “the joy of missing out”—which pretty much sums up what I was going for. My goal was to do nothing or as close to nothing as one could do with a full-time job at a women’s lifestyle website. Now that summer has come and gone, I have a bit of distance and can reflect on what the experience taught me. Here, my biggest takeaways from a summer spent celebrating myself. Photo: Getty Images/Westend61 1. The real thing we should fear missing out on is getting to know ourselves Super-packed calendars keep the mind occupied and allow us to avoid confrontation—with ourselves. At other times when I’ve felt exhausted or overwhelmed, I’ve thrown myself into social functions. My hope was that by putting an emphasis on the “fun,” I’d forget how I was feeling. Doing so didn’t solve my problems—it just delayed my dealing with them. By eliminating outside distractions, I forced myself to face my own fears and gave myself the mental space to solve them.
Sure, flaxseed is full of fiber—but how exactly do you use it?
September 30, 2018 at 07:00AM Shiny-object syndrome is real in the wellness world—it seems like every day, there’s a new “must-have” superfood or supplement gunning for a spot in your pantry. A jar of lucuma here, some turmeric root there, and the next thing you know, your grocery budget’s been cannibalized by ingredients no one really knows how to pronounce. Yet no matter how many new-to-us potions and powders may be hitting the shelves of Whole Foods, there’s something to be said for the basics. Flaxseed, for one, is a kitchen staple that should never be bumped from your grocery list, says health coach and digestive expert Robyn Youkilis. “I consider flaxseed to be one of the OG superfoods—before bone broth, matcha, and collagen were all popular, us health nuts were shopping for flaxseed at the health foods stores,” she says. There’s a reason these tiny, blonde-colored seeds have been a dietary staple for the past 6,000 years, Youkilis adds. “They’re packed with magnesium, thiamine, omega-3 fatty acids, and lignans, to name a few,” she says. These superstar nutrients have been linked with better sleep, brain health, mood regulation, and hormonal balance, respectively. Suddenly, flaxseed seems a little more exciting, doesn’t it? Keep reading for more on the health benefits of flaxseed and how to use it. Photo: Getty Images/SolStock Flaxseed: An unsung digestive hero In addition to the potential benefits mentioned above, there’s another major perk associated with flaxseed: It’s known to be amazing for your gut. For one thing, it can help keep you regular. “Flax is
Ready your stockpot for the most popular soup recipe on Pinterest
September 28, 2018 at 11:28AM Now that fall is in the air (and in your coffee cup), it’s time to stash away your trusty blender to make room for the stockpot (or slow cooker). But stop yourself from combing through the infinite pages of the World Wide Web to find recipes for the coziest soups and stews in which to dip your still-steaming loaf of super-bread. Rather, skip to the Pinterest finish line with a creamy vegan find: roasted butternut squash, the most-popular fall soup recipe on the whole platform. According to the social network, which is chock-full of ideas for living your best DIY life, the bowl that’s been saved 133 thousand times is one that’s filled to the brim with the orange-hued goodness, crafted by the food blogger behind Ahead of Thyme. The dish calls for 12 ingredients, including roasted butternut squash, carrots, celery, and onions, as well as apropos-for-autumn herbs like sage, thyme, and rosemary. After roasting the veggies for an hour, simply pop the ingredients into a food processor and, ta-da, dinner is served. View this post on Instagram Happy American Thanksgiving!! Serve my popular and delicious roasted butternut squash soup on your holiday table. Rosemary, thyme and sage… need I say more? | aheadofthyme.com – click link in bio for recipe #aheadofthyme A post shared by Sam | Ahead of Thyme (@aheadofthyme) on Nov 24, 2016 at 12:09pm PST //www.instagram.com/embed.js In second place (but not so close), a recipe for Italian chicken veggies soup comes in at 65 thousand saves—AKA,
Meet amaranth: The brain-boosting, gluten-free antidote to quinoa burnout
September 28, 2018 at 06:16AM By now, quinoa is pretty much a staple in every healthy gal’s pantry. And while the gluten-free grain definitely deserves all the props it receives, throwing it into your buddha bowls and veggie burgers week after week is sure to get a little boring eventually. The quinoa-fatigue fix? Switch up your carb rotation with amaranth, a lesser-known, yet no-less-nourishing ancient grain that’s quickly finding favor in wellness circles. Just like quinoa, it’s packed with protein and is fiber-rich, but it also has some significant health benefits all its own. “Amaranth is an incredibly nutritious grain dating back to the Inca, Maya, and Aztec civilizations—which is why it gets described as ‘ancient’,” says BZ Nutrition owner Brigitte Zeitlin, MPH, RD. “It has an earthy, nutty flavor and is super versatile, making it easy to incorporate into your diet in numerous ways for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.” Keep reading for more on the health benefits of amaranth and how to cook with it. Photo: Getty Images/Aleksandar Nakic Why is amaranth so good for you? When you compare amaranth to other grains, it’s on par with them in a lot of ways, says Zeitlin. “All whole grains are good sources of fiber and B vitamins, and amaranth is as well,” she explains. These nutrients are key for keeping your metabolism strong and your energy high, respectively. But there are also a few areas in which amaranth exceeds the status quo. “What makes amaranth stand out from the other grains is